On the money

[Apology: Thanks to a work crisis of biblical proportions, I could not make SeaGL this past weekend. My apologies go to anyone who was expecting to see me — for reasons good or ill — and I promise you that I will be there next year.]

You have to hand it to Rwanda. Not only does the East African nation put its money where it’s mouth is when it comes to educating its children using the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop, they also put the XO on their money, shown above on the 500-franc note.

In talking to San Francisco State University’s Sameer Verma, one of the leaders of the OLPC-SF group which organizes the annual OLPC summit this upcoming weekend in San Francisco, he says that the Rwanda project is at 220,000 machines and growing, and they are doing it well.

In fact, they’re doing it so well that the government of neighboring Kenya is taking a look at the program that the Rwandans have already established in an effort to emulate it, which they plan to do next year, according to the linked article.

Meanwhile, back in the states, the OLPC Summit is scheduled for Oct. 18-20 at the SFSU Downtown Campus on Market Street. You can register here, and if you can’t go and want to help someone else to go, you can donate there as well. But if you have a chance to go, you should make it there.

Also on the radar this week:

Rumors of its demise . . . : Jim Lynch of IT World wrote an item mentioning the demise of Medibuntu with the click-grabbing headline, “A harbinger of doom for Ubuntu?”

Pffffft. Seriously, who’s writing the headlines over there?

First, I had to look up Medibuntu — is it an Ubuntu spin for medical professionals? — before finding that it’s a spin for “media, entertainment and distractions.” In his defense, Lynch also writes in the article that it would not make much of a difference to Ubuntu if Medibuntu goes away, since most of what is found on it can also be found Ubuntu itself.

But let’s be careful with that “harbinger of doom” thing, OK? Had it been a *buntu that begins with an X or a K, then we’d have to call all hands on deck. But this? Nope. Not even close.

Larry l’uomo Software Libero in italiano: For those of you who speak Italian, there’s a new Free/Open Source Software blog called Magliettabianca which presented me the honor of an interview — a two-part interview, no less! — this week on their site. Part two comes up next week, hopefully, and if you don’t speak Italian, not to worry: The English translation (or I should say the original English interview) can be found here (yes, I know it’s “wide range,” not “ride range” — my typo). Let me say to the team members I know, Edoardo Maria Elidoro and Marco “Milozzy” Milone — and to the rest of the team: Alessio “Alfierenero” Perona, Davide Cipolla, Diego Pi, Elisa Peroni, Enrico “Magliettabianca” Bastelli, Fanfurlio Farolfi, Federico Di Pierro, Gaetano Di Bari, Mario Calabrese, Massimiliano Donini, Stefano Bergamini — “grazie mille a tutti” for the honor of appearing on what looks like an excellent new on-line publication for Italian FOSS advocates. Keep up the great work!

Off to Felton LUG. See you next Sunday, if not sooner.

This blog, and all other blogs by Larry the Free Software Guy, Larry the CrunchBang Guy and Larry Cafiero, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license. In short, this license allows others to download this work and share it with others as long as they credit me as the author, but others can’t change it in any way or use it commercially.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and develops business software at Redwood Digital Research, a consultancy that provides FOSS solutions in the small business and home office environment.)

a work crisis of biblical proportions
I shall savor that mental image for the rest of the week. That had to be a Major Bummer. ‘SeaGL 2014’ is our new war chant.

Rwanda done good. Maybe the US could put RMS on…………never mind, back to work.
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Larry l’uomo Software Libero in italiano…sheeze, more type casting. Cultural solidarity
and all that. That looks like a nice blog, alas the Colonel does not know Italiano. I will visit there, the blog that is.

The Portales Linux Users Group had 6 people at the table on Friday! Linux in the
coffee shop.